While Waiting

Caitríona Reed

for J.M., on her birthday

While waiting at the airport:— LAX, London, de Gaulle

or for a train to El Paso, Paddington, Howrath, Milano, or Seoul

—look around. You knew them once.

Look again.

Uncertain strangers are as familiar

as your own face in the mirror.

Look at her.

Sweet Jesus she is,

Sweet Buddha, Demeter, Theresa, Sita . . .

Look at everyone; each one.

Imagine!

Without him

the world could hardly recognize itself.

Without her

memory would lose continuity,

dreams fade

and history, unwritten,

would dissipate like so much smoke

of ancient burning cities.

Look at everyone as other than what they first may seem.

Oracle, gardener, warrior, peace-maker, sophist and queen

yogini, tailor, demi-god, vagabond, impresario, libertine.

Look! Look at him as humble, good-hearted,

holding impeccable integrity,

courageous, wise and kind—

or,

capable of genocide, greedy,

grown cold with bitterness,

with the fear that binds like sharp wire;

the dereliction of an unraveling mind.

See everyone as otherly assigned,

not what their appearance describes.

That woman once imagined herself a man; that man a woman—

in their soul or behind the veil of clothing.

That child construed herself an old, old man.

That nonagenarian, a child again,

a Samoan dancer, an Algerian playwright,

cutting hay in Samarkand,

or mending fevers with a steady hand.

Look at this one as a mythic gambler;

or as your lover,

as the assassin of all deceptions, a teller of truths.

Look at that one as the era’s great painter

eating paint like de Kooning,

eating time like Paul Cezanne.

John Coltrane, Anna Akhmatova.

Jimmy someone-or-other—everyone’s canary.

What happens with him happens to us all.

Set your heart right for him.

Every morning and every night

set your heart right.

Understand that everyone has lived a most difficult life,

unspoken, filled with uncertainties and sacrifice.

Look inside,

to touch the never mentioned secrets.

Stand for a time, at the balcony,

on the street of this life,

to glimpse the procession

in moments that last forever.

You waited all your life.

You lived twenty-five years to find this,

fifty years, you could say,

lifetimes, you could say. Look at her. Look at him.

You waited all the time that ever had life to it,

and more..

Ancient forests were shimmering,

  before flowers and voices ever existed,

  anticipating these moments

Look at the new hills rising out of the green maze of early summer,

the bright bird splashing in the fountain,

the soaring larks of spring,

what is gone, bitterness and stale regret,

and what leads us on towards each other,

what we imagine, and what we beget.

. . . all this, while waiting

a few minutes

for the bus,

or on the train

in Mexico, Mauritania,

New South Wales, or Spain.

© Caitríona Reed May, 2000